


Reward

by sunaddicted



Series: The way you said "I love you" [11]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Banter, Character Study, Flirting, M/M, Slice of Life, Snarky Q, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24043465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunaddicted/pseuds/sunaddicted
Summary: [...]And no-" Q raised a finger, letting it hover imperiously in the air between them "-don't do that. Don't pout""I'm not pouting""Oh, and what do you call that?""Disappointment"
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Series: The way you said "I love you" [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573432
Comments: 2
Kudos: 78





	Reward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soufflegirl91](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soufflegirl91/gifts).



> Inspired by this prompt by the lovely souffle girl from the slack prompt list: "the Scrabble mug is self-refilling. Of course, Q just thinks it's self-refilling because he's usually too absorbed in his work to noticed the minions and Bond refilling it for him" - I really hope you like it, my dear. 
> 
> This also is part of my "the way you said I love you series" for the prompt "over a cup of tea"

_Reward_

Q yawned loudly, the noise barely muffled behind his hand as he stretched luxuriously, the back of the ergonomic chair tipping dangerously towards the floor with his weight while he squinted behind his glasses, trying to read the time at the bottom corner of the screen of his laptop; however, his pupils seemed to refuse to put the small numbers into focus, evidently on strike after so many hours spent working while Q-Branch became steadily quieter and darker - its artificial twilight enveloping in a shadowy embrace the skeleton crew sluggishly taking their seat at their designated stations, spotted here and there with memorabilia of lives lived out of MI6. 

Saying that Q had never snooped would have been a big, fat lie: he was a spy as well - albeit one who rarely put foot in the field - and it was in his nature to put his nose where it didn't belong to, his brain professionally deformed to crave and acquire any and all informations surrounding him, especially when they were as easily accessible as creased pictures stuck to the stem of a lamp or stickers littering desktop computers. Of course those mementos made him want to poke harder, to bury his nose deeper - but he tried to repress the urge, he shoved it down in the depths of his heart and just contemplated what details he had, abandoning himself to flights of fancy that built glass-spun castles in the air: he had always had a creative mind, thinking in 0s and 1s didn't necessarily prelude to a lack of creativity.

Quite the contrary, really: a coder who didn't have at least even the smallest sprinkle of imagination within themself was bound to imitation, rather than being launched towards creation. 

Craig had a daughter - or a niece he was particularly attached to, enough to have her gaping smile neatly framed on his desk, next to the sticky notes Q would deny to his dying day pilfering from time to time - that looked like she was aspiring to be the first ballerina on the moon, a pink tutu fitted over a white ausytaunat suit, the helmet proudly tucked under her arm as if it completed her outfit as much as the bows in her hair and the chunky glitter on her face did.

R had a collection of postcards taped to the wall of her cubicle, all tastefully arranged to harmonize paysages impossibly far away from one another and to avoid colours crashing with each other, a task undoubtedly helped by the fact that they seemed to all have been picked by the same mysterious sender - Q didn't know that just because the taste who had bought them was clearly unique but he had admittedly looked at their back and found the same handwriting covering them over and over. However, there were no stamps nor addresses: he wondered who would go to the lengths of buying postcards and writing them, only to bring them over upon their return, slipping them somewhere they knew R would find them. 

Bao's post was invaded by a rainbow of candy wrappers that got trashed at the end of the day, her owner distractedly swiping them into the trashcan beneath her desk as if they were fallen leaves - caramels, chocolates, fizzies, gumdrops, mints, nougats, toffees, taffy... her selection was vast and variegated and just looking at the wrappers was enough to make the back of Q's tongue tense and ache as his salivary glands flooded his mouth with want. 

Rekha kept on her desk the only living thing besides humans that Q-Branch ever saw in its corridors: a fleshy and engorged succulent, fat and snug in its homemade ceramic pot - it almost looked smug, cradled as it was in the rich soil Rekha had provided it, its green and pink leaves growing in rosettes that he had caught her petting more than once, especially when she was stressed. 

Q leaned forward, the back of the chair following him like a shadow as it rightened itself, and reached for his mug with a sigh that was a mix between resignation and annoyance: either he would have to make do with disgustingly cold dregs or he would have to get up and make the trek all the way to the break room in order to make himself a fresh cup; it was in those moments that Q hated himself for forbidding the presence of any electrical equipment that wasn't work-related inside his Branch, otherwise he would have had an electric tea kettle plugged up next to his printer and his caffeine addiction probably worsened tenfold. 

The Quartermaster was so sure of the mug being empty that when he lazily grasped the handle and started to raise it from the desk without being particularly careful, he almost let it fall and spilled its contents all over his laptop when it was evident by its weight that it was full and, most importantly, recently refilled if the heat emanating from the well-loved ceramic that was invitingly caressing his knuckles was anything to go by.

When exactly had that happened?

Not that he was complaining but Q had no memory of getting up and making himself tea - and the stiffness of his joints seemed to pay testament to that even if, to be fair, his bones didn't feel particularly more flexible and less creaky even when he hadn't been slowly turning into a fossil behind his desk.

Not that it even was the first time that such an extraordinary thing had occurred - whenever he was expecting it the least, his mug seemed to have magically refilled itself while he was distracted, too absorbed into his work to notice who or what had accomplished such a feat, ans every single time he risked pouring the hot tea all over himself and his equipment - far more sensitive than his skin could ever be to liquids. 

"I've never seen anyone stare at tea so confusedly"

Q's head snapped up, eyes tightened in annoyance behind the smudged lenses of his glasses "Bond"

"Are you trying to read the future at the bottom of your mug?" The agent teased, merciless.

The younger man arched an eyebrow, deliberately taking a slow sip to delay his answer and have an excuse to glare at the other a little longer - not that his gaze was ever going to be sharp enough to make James Bond do anything more than squirm and only when he was extremely angry at that, which didn't exactly happen too often because, whether he admitted it or not to himself, Q had a huge soft spot for Double-Oh Seven and everyone and their mothers knew that "I don't need to read the future to know you will destroy or steal whatever you have come to ask for"

James tutted as he swaggered closer to the desk, shamelessly shifting into Q's personal space until he was leaning against the edge, his back blocking out the screen of the laptop to fully commander the other's attention, something petty and ugly twisting his insides every single time that he wasn't the absolute centre of the other's focus "Who says I don't have a right to whatever I want?"

"Me, the Quartermaster of MI6 who, upon reading your mission specs, will decide what kind of equipment you qualify for. And no-" Q raised a finger, letting it hover imperiously in the air between them "-don't do that. Don't pout"

"I'm not pouting"

"Oh, and what do you call that?"

"Disappointment"

Q rolled his eyes and pushed lightly his feet against the floor, making the chair roll back enough to put himself out of the agent's arm's reach and whipped out his phone, navigating the touchscreen with ease until he found the new email in his inbox, detailing James' new mission - well, as much as it could be detailed: it wasn't always possible to send their agents out with much more than a handful of information, scraps that more often than not were barely enough to keep them alive as they found their footing out in the field "Tell me, what were you going to weasel out of my hands?"

"A flamethrower?"

"Keep dreaming, Bond"

James sighed "I deserve a reward for refilling your mug at least twice tonight?"

  
"Twice- what?" He surely would have noticed that, wouldn't he? He wasn't that blind - that distracted. In their field, that kind of disattention could seriously put him in danger; maybe not in the middle of Q-Branch, safe as it was ensconced deep in the bowels of MI6 and hopefully free of any moles, but outside in the streets - while doing the shopping, grabbing a tea, running errands - he was vulnerable, a rather appetizing target to anyone MI6 had ever wronged. 

"You were rather in the zone"

He must have been.

Q frowned down at the tea, tension gathering amidst the furrows in his forehead "Yeah"

"So - where's my reward?"

"You're not going to back down, are you?"

"Nope"

When the man grinned like that, almost with childlike delight, Q could easily see the man he had been before acquiring a licence to kill - before seeing far too much out in the field to ever going back to being whole, the kind of man that could easily integrate himself in society without it being a perfectly carved mask, honed on by years of practice.

Q wanted to say it was that smile that made him agree to giving the man exploding cufflinks - they both knew he would have handed the velvet box over even if the man had had rivers of darkness pouring out of those blue eyes "Thanks for the tea"

James winked as he turned his back on him.

Weightless.

Careless.

"I expect a better gadget next time"


End file.
